Rat skirt -- do you think it'll work?

We 'skirted' our coop and run on all sides with about 2 feet of 1/2" hardware cloth. The cloth is buried under dirt and woodchips and stapled firmly to the base of the coop/run frame. The 'skirting' overlaps on the corners.

I don't know about being smart enough to back up . . . the obnoxious things would just build a tunnel straight from the woods or wherever else they were coming from into my coop. I'd stomp their tunnels in and they'd be rebuilt the next day. When I bothered to move the coop, when I walked along where it had been I'd sink a few inches into the ground from all the tunnels they had criss crossing down there. It was weird. I'm holding my breath that it's not quite as bad at our new place. No clue whether it would stop raccoons . . . Luckily, I have yet to wrangle with that critter. It did stop a dog that had gotten into our yard, though, and that in itself was worth all the effort of putting on the skirt.

Rats can climb, and squeeze through amazingly small spaces, so it is pretty difficult to keep them out of a run. I know from experience that a skirt won't stop them. The best way to keep them out is to take out all food at night and lock it inside the coop. If there is no food, they won't bother coming in. Make sure all holes in the coop have hardware cloth over them. And get a nice big cat.

Rats are intelligent and resourceful when it comes to getting a nice snack. Our plan is to actually have cement under our entire run as well as the henhouse. We then will put 4-6 inches of playground sand over that (easy to clean!). We only plan on 4-6 hens and the run itself to be 5x12. I know it'll cost a bit to do it but then the safety it will afford will be our payback.